James May's Great Explorers: Season 1, Episode 1

1 - 1: Christopher Columbus

Long before football and rock'n'roll, the A-listers of the day were explorers, who risked their lives to sail over the horizon, seek new lands, and bring home unimaginable treasures to dark, damp Europe. In a major series debut for Channel 5, James charts the journeys of Christopher Columbus, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Captain James Cook, through hands-on experiments, examining technological wonders, and with plenty of messing about in boats - to investigate how these explorers changed the world forever. In the first edition - in an extraordinary tale of daring, greed, and downright stubbornness - how Columbus is celebrated as a national hero for 'discovering' the USA, but never actually set foot there. James dives headfirst into history, and gets hands-on with science, to understand how this stubborn young sailor ended up stumbling across two continents completely unknown to Europeans. James starts by travelling to south-west Spain, from where these world-changing voyages began, and on to Seville, London's jewellery quarter and St Bart's Hospital in London.